Analysis Of Norma Rae

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Norma Rae Movie Analysis
Unions were created to help the working man and woman achieve better wages and working conditions. Historically, unions were met with high scrutiny and resistance from management and self-organizing was a struggle. The movie Norma Rae perfectly depicts one woman 's struggle to organize a union within the textile mill she works at.
Summary of Movie
The movie Norma Rae opens in the summer of 1978 in a textile factory in a North Carolina town. As the camera pans through the mill, it follows a woman, later revealed as Norma Rae, as she moves about the machines. As she goes on break and tries talking to her mom, she realizes her mom cannot hear her and rushes her to the factory doctor. The doctor brushes off the loss …show more content…

Norma Rae gave him the tip to dumb down the flyers because to many big words were confusing to the factory workers. Management is disrespectful and rude to Ruben, where Ruben starts quoting legislation about interfering with union organization. Meanwhile, inside the factory manager calls Norma Rae into their office where she starts off the conversation as "Whatever it is, I didn 't do it!" It turns out they were promoting her to spot checker, she was only receiving minimum wage at the time and this would mean extra income for her family. During her brief time as a spot checker, Norma Rae began to lose her friends and family and ended up meeting her husband. The cost of losing her friends and family was not worth an extra $1.50 an hour and went back to working in the weaving …show more content…

It showed the employees struggle against management and the terrible working conditions of the factory. Like most union movies, viewers are meant to sympathize with the unions by seeing management as cruel, unforgiving people. I’m not saying that the employees’ struggles are fictional but the movies are dominantly one sided for union organization. Granted any movie that tried to show equal respects to both management and union organizers would probably not be as exciting because there is no defined “good” vs. “evil.” In all, Norma Rae brought to light hardships employees that work in deregulated factories and mills endured because management could do whatever they wanted and showed the need to unionize to protect employees.
Analysis
Norma Rae is an excellent movie to show the different aspects of unionization. From employee’s motivation to management’s reaction to the process of organization, it envelops these aspects while telling a compelling story.
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